Instead of Assassinating Soleimani Americans Should Have Built Him a Monument

As Obama was boosting al-Qaeda and ISIS Soleimani was containing them

Soleimani did far more for the safety of Americans than Bush, Obama or Trump ever did

In the wake of the Trump’s assassination of the Iranian general Soleimani I’m seeing a lot of Trump drones who think they’re making a profound observation by pointing out that Trump’s actions have supposedly led to the Democrats defending a “terrorist” or a “mass murderer” or something in that vein.

It’s the stupidest thing I’ve heard in months.

If only the Democrats were defending Soleimani because the man richly deserved it. Next to Bush, Obama and Trump, Soleimani was a downright American hero. Not just a greater and better man them (admittedly that’s a low bar to clear), but a better servant of America’s true national interest (admittedly that’s another very low bar).

Soleimani started his career at Quds by fighting the Taliban years before the US got involved in that fight:

Soleimani and the Quds Force first came into prominence in 1998, after the Taliban murdered hundreds of Afghan Shi’a and nine Iranians (eight diplomats and a journalist) following the capture of the northern Afghan city of Mazar-i Sharif.

While senior Iranian military leadership advocated a massive punitive expedition into western Afghanistan, Soleimani advised a more constrained response, with his Quds Force providing training and material support to the Northern Alliance, an umbrella group of forces opposed to the Taliban. Soleimani personally directed this effort, transforming the Northern Alliance into an effective fighting force.

After the terrorist attacks of 9/11, the US used the Northern Alliance to establish a foothold in Afghanistan and eventually drive the Taliban from power. Soleimani played a major role behind the scenes helping make the US-Northern Alliance partnership viable, including providing operational and intelligence support.

The US-Iranian cooperation was short-lived; President Bush’s designation of Iran as being part of “an Axis of Evil” caused Iran to terminate its cooperation with the Americans.

So at a time when Bill Clinton was busy declining opportunities provided to him by the CIA to take out bin Laden (who by this time had already carried out the US Kenya and Tanzania embassy bombings which killed over 200) and the Taliban were being backed by America’s then-favorite sons the Pakistanis, the Saudis and the Qataris, Soleimani was already fighting them.

Then in 2011, the US started a diplomatic, economic and media war against Syria and coupled it by dumping weapons and dollars on Islamists who shared trenches with al-Qaeda and (until 2013) ISIS. Nearly 50 percent of the fighters were foreign, many of them fresh arrivals from Libya where they had fought on the NATO-backed rebel side.

When this US-Saudi-Turkish assault on the Syrian state and support for Sunni jihad inevitably resulted in the meteoric rise of al-Qaeda and ISIS in Syria (from which the latter then swept western Iraq), Iran was the first in 2013 to recognize the danger and to react to contain it. Soleimani was the man who led a complex Iranian intervention, which stopped the Qaeda-ISIS onslaught and saved Syria’s secular, nationalist government.

It wasn’t until a year later that the US recognizing its mistake joined the fight, but only against ISIS which had spread from Syria to Iraq. As far as al-Qaeda was concerned it was still being de facto boosted by US largesse towards its junior partners in the rebel jihadi coalition.

Realizing they couldn’t do it all on their own Iranians proposed to the Russians they join the fight, against al-Qaeda and ISIS alike. Soleimani was part of these efforts, and part of the Iranian delegation that traveled to Russia to give the pitch. As a result in 2015 Russia joined the fight as well, a year after the Americans, and two years after the Iranians.

Where the Iranian involvement had saved Damascus and created a stalemate the added Russian involvement allowed Syria to regain the initiative and slowly push back against the still partly-US aided jihad.

In Iraq where the US was not pursuing regime change, Russian involvement was not necessary. Instead, Iraq regained the initiative and finally destroyed ISIS with the help of the US and Iran. The US contributed more firepower, particularly the air and artillery cover in the final stages, but the role of Iran and Soleimani was just as important, particularly organisationally and early on. When the corrupt and poorly led Iraqi regular army melted away, giving up major cities without a fight, Soleimani helped the much more motivated Popular Mobilisation Forces militias get going and take over.

Between the 1998-2002 fight against the Taliban and the 2013-2020 fight against ISIS and al-Qaeda Soleimani’s main concern was the US presence in neighboring Iraq. With Bush declaring Iran a part of “Axis of Evil” and the neocons drunk on war declaring that “boys go to Baghdad, but real men go to Tehran” who could blame him?

The US now officially blames Iran, and thus Soleimani, for the deaths of 600 of the nearly 4,600 US soldiers killed occupying or invading Iraq. The number is utter nonsense. It is arrived at by tallying up all US soldiers who were killed in clashes with any of the Shia Iraqi resistance groups.

However, the vast, overwhelming majority of the Shia Iraqi fighting against the US was done by Muqtada al-Sadr’s Mahdi Army which was Shia Islamist but also anti-Iranian Iraqi nationalist. Indeed in time, the relentless US pressure on Sadr would drive him into a tactical reconciliation with the Iranians, but by this point the Mahdi Army had also become a lot less active in the struggle against the US, directing most of its energies to Iraqi infighting.

In reality, the truly pro-Iranian factions, the Badr and Dawa groups which Iran had nurtured during the 1980s Iraq-Iran war, were all too willing to work with the Americans. In fact, it is Badr and Dawa that the US installed in Baghdad and who then fought with Americans against the Sunni resistance that was as much against US occupation as against the new Shia supremacy.

Did Iran at the time play a double game? Did it, on the one hand, welcome the US installing its Badr and Dawa proteges in Baghdad, but on the other, also helped Shia and Sunni groups hone their bomb-making skills, so as to ensure Americans lost enough blood to understand how costly a similar Iran occupation would be? Sure it did. But how much of a difference Iran made shouldn’t be overstated.

At the time, particularly around 2006-2007, Iran was blamed for every single roadside bomb attack in which a shaped charge was used. Bush and the neocons wanted Americans to believe these shaped charges, every single one, were being assembled in Iran and then smuggled into Iraq. This was total nonsense. Iraq was awash with weapons, and by this time with expert bomb-makers.

If anything Iran’s Quds would not have been doing the risky but needless work of smuggling in ready-made bombs, but instead would have spread manuals and perhaps some in-person training on how to make them with materials already in Iraq. Nonetheless, the vast majority of Iraqi bomb-makers owed their skills to Saddam’s army and Sunni jihadist literature, not Iran.

Did Soleimani, to defend his country, contribute to the deaths of some American soldiers? Undoubtedly yes, so did Sitting Bull and Crazy Horse, and countless other good patriots.

However, it is the Saudis, who saw the Iraq war as a larger Shia-Sunni conflict, who with their bankrolling* of the Sunni insurgency against the pro-Iranian Badr and Dawa contributed to the deaths of infinitely more American soldiers, yet they are in good graces in Washington. Now just as much as when they were actually financing Iraqi IEDs.

Indirectly Bush is likewise responsible for the deaths of many more American soldiers by throwing them into aggressive and immoral neocon wars of the Empire. (And then not even cracking down on the Saudis to cut off the funds to the Sunni insurgency to help protect them, but scapegoating Iran, which was doing far less, instead.)

Even with some help to the 2003-2011 anti-American struggle in Iraq taken into account, Soleimani did far more to fight America’s enemies than to aid them, which is more than could be said of Bush, Obama and Trump.


*This was done through private donations but which were fully tolerated by the state. Additionally, it is notable that the Saudis tended to disproportionately back the very worst parts of the Sunni insurgency.

57 Comments
  1. Brian says

    Dance with the devil that brung you, my mamma used to say. I’m sweet on your theocratic generalissimo, but tactically he was a legit target. So kick your heels up! America will pay the fiddler.

  2. DB says

    This is the most sane, sober and solemn analysis available online, to my knowledge, of the situation in Iraq and Iran right now, as regards US policy-making. Mainstream media deal only with competing claims, not real historical analysis. When the conflict is over, they will no doubt grace us with a thorough documentary on Soleimani, but too little, too late, to make any difference in policy-making…unless the alternate media outlets rise to the challenge.

    1. Ace says

      Agreed. Turn to any channel or spot on the radio dial right now and you can unearth a rich vein of pure jingoism. Judge Jeanine was not herusual self and was trotting out every tendentious claim about “terrorists” since the Battle of Waterloo. Rush, alas, was only slightly more restrained with his sacred truth that “Americans are winners” and that we “like winning.” Lou Dobbs was fully invested in the Iran/Soleimani = handmaidens of Satan notion as though US forces had never in history faced armed resistance.

      Also, it’s a lie that the attack on the Iraqi base that killed an American contractor came out of nowhere.

      Between July 19 and September 22 Iraqi paramilitaries were hit in their Iraqi bases on at least eight different occasions. In August the Israeli PM Netanyahu confirmed that Israel was carrying out these strikes “against Iranian consolidation”. (That was also just the latest escalation on top of Israeli strikes on Iraqi paramilitaries positioned against ISIS in eastern Syria.)

      However, as Iraqis fully understand Israel does not have the capability to strike targets in Iraq (and eastern Syria) without US logistical and intelligence support and the political go-ahead.

      America’s New War: Let’s Not Pretend That Iraqi Paramilitaries Drew First Blood. A US-enabled Israeli hunting season on Iraqi militias had been going on for months before the first US casualty.” By Marko Marjanović, Anti-Empire, 1/1/20.

      Also, I hate that even one American was killed or maimed as a result of combat in Iraq. The IEDs used against them were effective and a great danger to them. However, such mines are part of the inventory of American ground forces as can be seen by examination of Army Field Manual 20-32. Command-, pressure-, and tripwire-detonated mines are described in detail therein.

      The idea that the IEDs used against US troops in Iraq demonstrate some kind of Iraqi or Iranian depravity is absurd.

  3. chris/irish says

    its not hard to debunk the lies from the usa govt. trump needs impeached for treason.

    1. DemocrapSocialistsSuck says

      I am sorry for your loss ;(

      1. chris/irish says

        morons such as you need to remove yourselves from the internet. its obvious reading is not a skill you managed to learn/

        1. sdguy says

          But he does do a bang up job of shaving his mother’s back, ya know. You know, to earn beer money.

          1. chris/irish says

            lol lol

            1. DemocrapSocialistsSuck says

              arent you that cock sucker i saw blowing goats?

            2. rightiswrong rightiswrong says

              Are you the cock sucker who follows and rapes lone goats?

              Your video collection is full of beasties you sick cunt.

            3. DemocrapSocialistsSuck says

              I think that was your father

            4. rightiswrong rightiswrong says

              You don’t think you cock sucker.

              You do as you are paid to do. That’s what whores do.

          2. DemocrapSocialistsSuck says

            yo momma

        2. DemocrapSocialistsSuck says

          Yo mamma

  4. Rob Ready says

    I actually feel sorry for Soleiman, his family and the Iranian people. He was murdered by the neocon Zionist MI complex cabal–a truly Satanic group who profit from murder and misery. This cabal (and the Brits MI6 and BP) has been meddling with Iran since 1953. They installed their puppet, the psychotic Shah until he fled, and then the cabal got thrown under the bus when the US Embassy was seized in 1979.

    1. DemocrapSocialistsSuck says

      He is hell fucking 72 virgin goats lmfao

      1. Rob Ready says

        there is no hell

        1. DemocrapSocialistsSuck says

          Sure there is. It’s where your hero is banging goats as we speak.

          1. rightiswrong rightiswrong says

            And you speak incessantly about fucking animals, your personal favourite.

            1. DemocrapSocialistsSuck says

              No that’s what Muslims do dummy didn’t you see what I said?

            2. rightiswrong rightiswrong says

              Your lot are even lower than that ffs. How many skins are you down to these days, has your sister had her pussy cut yet by your desert customs?

      2. Rob Ready says

        You are mentally ill. Seek help.

        1. DemocrapSocialistsSuck says

          I am sorry for your loss.Take comfort knowing that gentle soul is enjoying his goats.

      3. rightiswrong rightiswrong says

        Go bake a cake, be close to your ancestors.

        1. DemocrapSocialistsSuck says

          Go suck a cock, be close to your dad.

          1. rightiswrong rightiswrong says

            Like you sucked my Dads cock!
            No thanks, I leave that shit for experts like yourself, what with you being a world class cock sucker.

            1. DemocrapSocialistsSuck says

              You must have me confused with your whoore momma again lol

            2. rightiswrong rightiswrong says

              Nah, it was you who sucked his cock, he remembered the little red dress you wore, as he got you that from his dogs bedding.

            3. DemocrapSocialistsSuck says

              See there you go confusing me with your cross dressing daddy lol

            4. rightiswrong rightiswrong says

              There you go again spouting bollox, projecting your sick perversions at imaginary people.

              It must be terrible to have a family background such as yours, with sex workers for parents, but you deserve it for shagging sheep and worshipping golden calves.

            5. DemocrapSocialistsSuck says

              Do you make sex with sheep like Soleimani is doing right now lmfao?

            6. rightiswrong rightiswrong says

              I wouldn’t know anything about sex with sheep, I leave that to you, an expert sheep shagger.

              I also don’t converse with the dead, but you seem to have no trouble contacting dead sheep.
              You should stop having sex with dead animals, it might help you develop a personality.

            7. DemocrapSocialistsSuck says

              Suuuure you don’t….

            8. rightiswrong rightiswrong says

              I’m not a degenerate like you, and I don’t pray to golden calves or child abusers, like you do.

              Fucking sheep is a desert thing, and your lot are sheep shaggers of historic heights.
              That’s why you worship calves, the kids of the animal world.

            9. DemocrapSocialistsSuck says

              I’m not a muslim dummy

            10. rightiswrong rightiswrong says

              No, you are a golden calf worshipping desert sheep shagger, even worse.

  5. Eileen Kuch says

    Fortunately, after having launched missiles against US troops stationed in Iraq (no casualties, btw), DJT decided to openly negotiate with his Iranian counterpart, Hassan Rouhani (he’s been doing that behind the scenes), thus preventing an outright war.
    Neither DJT nor the Iranian leadership want war .. Only the crazy brain-dead Globalists and Zionists want it .. and they fail to realize that such a war would escalate into a devastating 3rd World War, which would end all life – except for radiation-immune microorganisms and cockroaches.
    The Iranians could’ve produced casualties in the bases US troops and personnel were stationed, but they launched the missiles into areas away from the troops and other personnel stationed there.

    1. sdguy says

      “except for radiation-immune microorganisms and cockroaches” Oh, so the (((tribe))) survives, does it?

  6. Scott Oliver says

    “This doesn’t mean war,” wrote former Defense Department official Andrew Exum, “It will not lead to war, and it doesn’t risk war. None of that. It is war.“

    Trump has now fulfilled the wishes of Mossad. After proclaiming his intention to end America’s “stupid endless wars,” the president has effectively declared war on the largest country in the region in solidarity with Israel, the most unpopular country in the Middle East.

    https://www.counterpunch.org/2020/01/03/after-mossad-targeted-soleimani-trump-pulled-the-trigger/

  7. Canosin says

    this heinous murder of a hero is going to cost dearly to the Divided States of Zionist America (includes Israhell)….. from this point onwards there is no return possible…. this is a declaration of war no matter how strong the propaganda machine is trying to justify this cowardly executed murder….. finally the satanists of the Judeo-Evangelical Zionist America have got their wish come true starting WW3. .. what they don’t take in consideration, is that the outcome is going to be their own end and destruction of the Divided States of Zionist America .. and consequently the annihilation of the root cause of all desasters since 1948…..

    1. DemocrapSocialistsSuck says

      The hero has his reward, 72 virgin goats in hell lmfao Go Trump kill more Persian scum

      1. chris/irish says

        you are far to stupid to be on the internet. take pour closed eyes and empty head to the nearest hole in the ground

        1. DemocrapSocialistsSuck says

          Take comfort your hero is loving his virgin goats in Paradise.

          1. chris/irish says

            can you prove you are any more stupid than you have already?

      2. Canosin says

        for sure your whore mother shat you out when you were “born”….. scum will be erased….. a “natural process” getting rid of inbreds like you is in the making

        1. DemocrapSocialistsSuck says

          Yo momma

      1. DemocrapSocialistsSuck says

        So sorry for your loss. When will you be moving to Iran? They don’t like queers there though so keep your gayness a secret.

        1. rightiswrong rightiswrong says

          What, he should be as care free as you are about being a cock sucker!

          You have no shame, cock sucker.

  8. DemocrapSocialistsSuck says

    Solemani is in hell with his 72 virgin goats. All Muslims are filth die die die

    1. chris/irish says

      take your troll idiocy elsewhere .

      1. DemocrapSocialistsSuck says

        I am sorry for your loss 🙁

        1. chris/irish says

          i am sorry you lost your mind when you sold it for trolldom.

          1. DemocrapSocialistsSuck says

            Yo mama

Reply To sdguy
Cancel Reply

Your email address will not be published.

Anti-Empire